Cathy Parker’s vision took her from the television screen of her St. Johns County home to the frozen tundra of the Arctic.

And right along the banks of the Arctic Ocean, her little project, an $800,000 miracle that defied logistics and business practices and doubters continues to inspire.

Parker’s quest to help secure a state-of-the-art turf football field for Alaska’s Barrow High School team was an incredible story when it happened eight years ago, and it continues to be that. People ask Parker about it, how she helped build an unlikely bridge between the First Coast and the northernmost town in the country.

A high school football team in Alaska that is already the subject of an upcoming TV show on the NFL Network will also be the inspiration for a movie.

The movie will be called Touchdown on the Tundra and it tells of how the creation of a football team at Barrow High School helped bring hope and purpose to a tiny population of isolated Native Eskimo kids.

The same unlikely football program is featured in Football Town: Barrow, Alaska, which debuts on NFL Network on Thursday.

The Barrow High School Whalers are so secluded that the team flies at least 500 miles for each game not played on its home field, which is made of blue turf on a strip of land near a frozen lagoon at the northernmost point in the U.S.

BARROW, Alaska — Standing on the sidelines, looking across the high school football field, it all seems normal. The zebra-striped officials, the screaming parents, the face-painted cheerleaders. But normal? This is anything but.

Four of the six officials are working their first game. The calendar says it’s the middle of August, but snow flurries fill the air. While the cheerleaders drape themselves in blankets, the parents and children wear sealskin and caribou parkas.

TURF NEWS!

Cathy Parker’s vision took her from the television screen of her St. Johns County home to the frozen tundra of the Arctic. And right along the banks of the Arctic Ocean, her little project, an $800,000 miracle that defied logistics and business practices and doubters continues to inspire. Parker’s quest to help secure a state-of-the-art […]